Color Your Fall

Make the most of the season with getaways rich in color and culture

By

David Kaufman

Sept. 12, 2013 6:28 p.m. ET

SEPTEMBER MARKS the end of summer's last stand as heat and humidity give way to cooler skies, balmy breezes and autumn's palette of vibrant reds and golds. Make the most of the season with fall getaways that are equally rich in color and culture.

Art Attack

SWITZERLAND // Art Basel may be long over, but this Swiss city's cultural scene hums well into fall thanks to its museums. The Kunstmuseum houses Europe's oldest public art collection, while the Museum für Gegenwartskunst specializes in works from 1960 onward. Best of all is the Renzo Piano-designed Beyeler Foundation, whose Maurizio Cattelan exhibition makes way next month for Thomas Schutte's bronze busts.

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Isola Bella, Lake Maggiore, Italy
Luca Da Ros/SIME/4Corners

ITALY // November marks the end of the 55th Venice Art Biennale—which means there's still plenty of time to enjoy La Serenissima at its culture-rich best. Park yourself at the newly opened Aman Canal Grande, a restored and rare palazzo monumentale near the Rialto Bridge (amanresorts.com). Also close are the Biennale's best bets: from Ai Weiwei in the German Pavilion to a Ravel-inspired video installation by Anri Sala in the French Pavilion.

FRANCE // This year has been Marseille's moment to shine. In 2013's European Capital of Culture, a new InterContinental Hotel now overlooks the historic port, where you can find the new MuCEM and Regards de Provence museums. Marseille's food scene has also been updated. Try pan-Mediterranean comfort classics at Café Populaire (110 Rue Paradis; +33 4 91 02 53 96) or Philippe Moreno's fish-focused restaurant at the MuCEM.

Fall Foliage

FRANCE // The vineyards of Limoux in the Languedoc may be best known for their sparkling wines, but they also offer one of Southern Europe's most indulgent opportunities to enjoy autumnal colors. Here, as workers harvest Mauzac and Chardonnay grapes, the vine leaves transform into endless fields of orange and gold. Taste Limoux bubbly directly at its source at J. Laurens, which produces some of the area's top vintages. jlaurens.fr

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Neuschwanstein Castle, Germany
Brian Lawrence/Getty Images

GERMANY // Fall colors arrive in Bavaria just in time for Oktoberfest (Sept. 21-Oct. 6). Take a break from all that lager with a visit to nearby Neuschwanstein Castle, the fairytale-like hilltop palace built by King Ludwig II in 1892 (neuschwanstein.de). Two hours from Munich, the castle is tucked deep in forests whose leaves seem ablaze with color. Horses and buggies can ferry you to the site, but the low-impact trail provides the most flora-filled fun.

NEW YORK // The Catskills may only be 90 minutes from Manhattan, but this semi-mountainous region is alive with color in the fall. Revel amid the changing leaves in the tiny town of Phoenicia, where a quartet of entrepreneurial Brooklynites recently debuted The Graham & Co., a hotel with 20 rustic rooms, an al fresco pool and ultra-informed staffers with full foliage knowledge. thegrahamandco.com

Garden Islands

AZORES // Pico is the second-largest island in the Azores, with a unique topography defined by terraced hillside vineyards. These distinctive stone-walled lots are a Unesco World Heritage Site, rich with volcanic soil and densely planted with white Verdelho wine grapes. Fall marks the start of festival season here—capped in October by the annual food festival, where free-flowing Verdelho is served with local cheeses and charcuterie.

ITALY // The Lake Region is best-known as the stomping ground of cinematic royalty. But Lake Como and Maggiore's real stars are the island gardens developed over centuries by the region's actual aristocracy. On Isola Bella, the Borromeo family has created a garden compound so fanciful it appears like a floating wedding cake. The nearby Villa Balbianello, set on a 12-hectare isthmus, pairs protected woods with meticulously tended gardens and elegant architecture.

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Abama Golf & Spa Resort, Spain
Ernst Wrba / Alamy

SPAIN // It's easy to dismiss the Canary Islands as a package-tourism no man's land. But that would mean missing out on the archipelago's lush tropical landscapes and increasingly upscale waterfront resorts. Enjoy both at the Abama Golf and Resort (abamahotelresort.com), set on a cliff above a private slice of sandy shoreline. The 18-hole golf course is enlivened with over 25,000 palm trees and hundreds of semitropical plants.

Summer Sun

TURKEY // The Aegean Riviera continues to rev up its boho bona fides as artists and designers join moguls and media makers along its crystalline coastline. The area's latest gathering spot is the hamlet of Alacati, near Izmir. This season's best beds are found at La Capria, a 20-room hotel with Moroccan-meets-Mediterranean furnishings and its own 25-meter gulet for island hopping in the late-summer sun. lacapriasuitehotel.com

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Museum Casa das Historias, Cascais
Joel Santos/Getty Images

PORTUGAL // For centuries, the beach town of Cascais has lured both surfers and nobility to its sun-kissed shores, barely 45 minutes from Lisbon. Drenched in the stark Atlantic sun, the coastline is dotted with historic forts. Make like a soldier and head to the new 126-room Pousada de Cascais hotel, a converted 16th-century citadel that marries new-build rooms with a historic core—including a handful of guest rooms within the original barracks quarters. pousadas.pt

CYPRUS // The azure seas fronting the resort-town of Paphos are a world away from the island's cookie-cutter package hotels. Here, where Aphrodite is fabled to have journeyed and Roman governors later ruled, archaeology is as abundant as the bronze sandy beaches. With summer weather lasting well into fall, book a room at the Modernist Almyra Hotel, where whitewashed villa suites include private rooftop decks. almyra.com

Vibrant Cities

SPAIN // In Andalucía, where whitewashed villages are as common as sherry and jamon, Júzcar stands out—literally. But its brightly colored blue architecture isn't indigenous. It's the result of a marketing ploy; the town hosted the 2011 premiere of "The Smurfs." Today, tens of thousands of visitors flock here to experience these Moorish houses in their azure glory. For purists, the original terra-cotta roofs will be a welcome relief.

MOROCCO // Like most popular Moroccan destinations, Chefchaouen has monumental mosques, traditional tea shops and a bustling medina. But while color in most cities is limited to the bazaar, Chefchaouen is awash in it. During the last century, the city's buildings were increasingly accented in vibrant blue—both as a cooling mechanism and as an act of spirituality by its once large Jewish population, for whom sky blue was a sacred color.

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Bergen, Norway
Art Kowalsky / Alamy

NORWAY // The country's second-largest city may be best-known for its nearby fjords and glaciers, but Bergen is rich in culture and architecture. The latter is thanks to the German merchants of the Hanseatic League, who crowded Bergen's wharf with colorful wooden warehouses, which today comprise one of Norway's seven Unesco World Heritage Sites. Once filled with cod, they now house restaurants, shops and the Hanseatic Museum.

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